The Strongest Building Material is...

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Broad Question: What Building material is strongest?

Specific Question: Will a piece of wood board, drywall, particle board or a piece of plywood hold the most weight before breaking or snapping?

Variables

Independent Variable: Building material

Dependent Variable: Weight Held (lbs)

Variables That Need To Be Controlled: Each build material needs to be the same length, same thickness, same placement of weight on the material, and All new materials.

Hypothesis: I hypothesize that a wood board will hold the most weight before snapping, followed by plywood,particle board and then drywall.

Graph of Hypothesis:

Experimental Design:

I will be conducting an experiment that will determine which building material is strongest, a wood board, ply wood, particleboard or drywall .I will be conducting my experiment in my fathers shop. I am the only person that will be involved in doing my experiment. I will have to conduct at least 3 trials to get an accurate result to come a conclusion, but I am going to do 5 trials. As I conduct my experiment I will be recording my data onto a printed out spread sheet.

To document the process of my experiment, I will have a notebook on hand and as I put weight on the building material being test, I will record what is happening like when the material snaps or when it makes a cracking noise or when a crack appears, I will also be taking pictures. I am going to upload all the photos on to my wiki-space page as well as make print outs for my display board

Materials List:

• 3 five gallon buckets
• 1 weight scale (lbs)
• 5 pieces of 1”x2”wood board 3ft long
• 5 pieces of 1”x2 plywood 3ft long
• 5 pieces of 1”x2”Drywall 3ft long
• 5 pieces of 1”x2” particle board 3ft long
• 1 shovel
• Dirt
• Barbell weights
• Tape measure
• Saw

Detailed Procedure:

1.Gather all materials(buckets, dirt, scale, building materials, pencil, data table, barbell weigthts, tape measure, saw ect.)
2.Take one the building materials and measure it to 3ft long, mark it and cut it. Mark it so the width is 2inches, check and make sure it is atleast ½ ” thick.
3.Repeat step two five times with each building material.
4. Once I have cut all the materials to the right length and width, I place the buckets in such a way that the ends of the building material will be in the center of the buckets (the buckets are going to be flipped upside down). Remember to take pictures and make observations throughout experiment.
5.Take the third bucket( make sure the bucket is empty) and weight it, right the weight, right the weight down somewhere on your paper.
6.Place the bucket in the center of the building material that is set on top of the other 2 buckets and start placing dirt into the bucket until the building material breaks after if breaks put the bucket on the scale with all the dirt still in it take the weight of the bucket with dirt and subtract the weight of the bucket empty from earlier and record the weight in the data table.You could also use barbell weights if you don’t want to make a mess when the building material breaks, it’s the same as the bucket, just place the weights in the center of the building material until it breaks and record the weight on the data table.
7. Repeat step 6 five times with a new piece of building material each time until there isn’t any peices more building material that is cut to 3ft long.
9. Find the average weight it took to break each kind of building material and record it in your data table.

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Background Research

particleboard (PB) using 10% urea-formaldehyde resin. Particleboard panels were evaluated for internal bond (IB), modulus of elasticity (MOE), modulus of rupture (MOR), thickness swell (TS) and water absorption compared to particleboard manufactured from virgin southern pine and CCA-treated southern pine.


With Resin Spruce wood is strongest: the resin percents and modulus of rupture(or MOR) (psi) are....

6%= 2500MOR

10%=2900MOR

14%=3100MOR

With Resin Pine wood is the 2nd strongest:the resin percents and modulus of rupture(or MOR) (psi) are...

6%=2200MOR

10%=2700MOR

14%=2900MOR


as developed as an improved moisture resistant board, offering the same advantages of a traditional moisture resistant board with added mold resistance in the core and paper. XP Gypsum Board panels consist of a specially treated, fire-resistant, gypsum core encased in a heavy mold/mildew/moisture resistant, 100% recycled, National Gypsum's original PURPLE paper on the face side and a heavy, mold/mildew/moisture resistant, 100% recycled, gray paper on the back side.

wood is strongest at 2.5ft in length

References:

1:Clausen, Carol A, Kartal, and S Nami."Properties of particleboard made from recycled CCA-treated wood ." treesearch.fs.fed.us/. 2000. Web. 18 Jan. 2012.

2:" Gold Bond XP Gypsum Board ." nationalgypsum.com. 2011. Web. 20 Jan. 2012.

3:Schwartz, Max. Basic Lumber Engineering for Builders. Washington D.C: Nikon Inc., Web. 20 Jan. 2012. <http://books.google.com/books?id=X3OPshEm8Z4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=lumber&hl=en&sa=X&ei=UcAZT--VL6Xl0QG1_KjWCw&sqi=2&ved=0CHUQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=lumber&f=false>.

4:Shmulsky, Rubin, and David P. Jones. Forest Products & Wood Science. 6th. Danvers, Mass: Blackwell Publishing , 2011. Google Books. Web. 20 Jan. 2012. <http://books.google.com/books?id=G4IydiqGH7sC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false>.

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Results:

Data Table:

Graphs:

Photos:

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Data Analysis

Conclusion: The original purpose of the experiment was to find out what the strongest common building material was. The results of the experiment were that the strongest building material was a wood board which held 207lb + followed by the plywood which held 31.8 lbs followed by fiber board which held 31.6lbs and lastly the drywall which held 7.3lbs.

Discussion: I hypothesized that a wood board will hold the most weight before snapping, followed by plywood,fiber board and then drywall. My results support my hypothesis.There is a relationship between my independent/dependent variables. Some trends that my data shows is that the thicker the material the more weight it can hold also, the more common the material the stronger the material is. I think my test went smoothly with some minor problems. Sometimes the material would break before I got a picture of it or the weights would fall or the weights weren't enough to break that specific material. If I were to redo my experiment, I would get a bigger set of weights and longer materials so they would break easier. An interesting future study might involve testing where on a board does it the most stress if weight placed on it.

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